The stereotype in the great debate over evolution versus intelligent design is that it is a contest between science on the one side and faith on the other. In reality the contest is between science and faith on the same side versus fantasy and a gnawing need to believe on the other. Stephen Hawking arguably the most brilliant mind in physics today has made a landmark contribution to the fantasy side of the debate with publication of his new book, The Grand Design. But that”s just my opinion.

Hawking proclaims two mutually excluding propositions in his book, according to the review by physicist Dr. Ben Wiker. On the one hand he declares that all existing theories of the origins of the universe are as subjective as they are non-comprehensive. On the other he states that these theories are comprehensive enough and objective enough to prove that God neither exists nor is necessary for the existence of everything else.

The problem? You cannot have it both ways. If a theory is subjective it is tainted by having been processed through an intellectual lens that sees only what the viewer is prepared in advance to admit.

Likewise, if it is not comprehensive it cannot entertain all of the relevant data and so cannot make comprehensive statements. But the declaration that God does not exist is both an objective and a comprehensive statement. It is in this case a desperate attempt to escape the prime implication of the Big Bang, that there is out there a Big Banger.

Don”t get me wrong I have the most profound respect for science, as I do for the scriptures we call the Bible. Science demonstrates that the universe is about fourteen billion years of age and that the creation of our planet occurs in six distinct phases. The Bible says the same thing, and the two sources agree on the ordering of those phases if we agree that the Genesis account presupposes an earthbound point of view. Neither science nor the Bible insist on six twenty-four-hour days the choice of the Hebrew word, yom, to denote days or time periods, squares with the record of nature and is deliberately ambivalent on the length of these days.

According to Astrophysicist Hugh Ross, for life to exist a planet must be just the right distance from its star to guarantee temperatures that permit life. A single large moon at the proper distance is needed to stabilize the rotational tilt of the planet for climate stability. Earth must necessarily be four to six billion years old for these conditions to obtain even under optimum conditions, and only a universe about ten billion years older can produce these conditions. In addition, greenhouse gases must be removed from the atmosphere at the right rate to take advantage of the sun”s growing luminosity.

The age of our earth is also necessary to permit development of the environment needed to sustain not just life but technically advanced life. These are just a few of the more than two hundred finely tuned conditions needed for life as we know it and the odds of all of them coming to be in the same place by chance are mathematically beyond impossible.

Hawking is left to speculate on the existence of an infinite number of universes the multi-verse school of thought for which there is no other evidence than the need of those who posit them to explain how our universe could have come into existence by chance with a mere fourteen billion years in which to do it a mathematical impossibility if ours is all there is.

He is left to wrestle with his own contention that the laws of physics, not God, create the universe.

The logical problem with that is that worlds do not obey physical laws the way I observe speed signs on the freeway, as Hawking”s Oxford colleague John Lennox points out. Physical laws simply describe the action of observable forces and patterns; these influences must have their own causation.

One might argue the fact that Hawking”s mind is better able than mine to comprehend existence were it not for the fact that any eighth grader can see that if you place all of the parts for the space shuttle in a box and keep tossing the box until the shuttle comes down assembled you will need a very long time for tossing.

But Hawking does not want to believe in a Creator, and that is his problem. He does not have an intellectual problem at all; he has a spiritual problem.

—— James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net.